EU Parliament: plenary meeting, state of human rights in Turkey and debate on the future of Europe

5 febbraio 2018 @ 17:16

(Strasbourg) The debate on the “future of Europe” goes on at the European Parliament: the Prime Minister of Croatia, Andrej Plenković, will give a speech at the plenary session, in Strasbourg, this week (5 to 8 February), as in January it was the Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, who had spoken with the MEPs. Plenković will speak tomorrow morning at the plenary meeting and will discuss the future of the European Union, starting with open challenges on several fronts: economy, security and terrorism, education and culture, migration, the accession of the Balkan countries. Also tomorrow, a debate will be held in the floor with the High Representative, Federica Mogherini, about the situation of the Middle East. On Thursday, the MEPs will vote a resolution on human rights in Turkey: the text condemns the deaths of civilians in Afrin and the repression of freedom of the press. The resolution should lead to condemn “Turkey’s military attack on the Kurdish enclave of Afrin and the hundreds of arrests made by Ankara’s government”. “On January 29th, the Turkish Minister of the Interior – the EU Parliament points out in a release – announced that in the previous 10 days Turkey had arrested 311 people for terrorist propaganda on social media. Such convicts include politicians, journalists and activists, who asked for peace and condemned the military offensive of the Turkish government in the enclave of Afrin, in north-west Syria”.